This story was part of a chapter in my upcoming book about how educators
must adhere to district, state, and federal mandates. My editor and I
decided together that it should be cut, in the name of being succinct and
avoiding repetitious point-making (a flaw of mine, certainly); I didn't
mind it being cut because there's part of me that isn't comfortable sharing
such a private conversation with a wider audience. But since you've come here on your own, I tell the story here:

Toward the end of the trip, I had developed some questions about the
country’s educational system that had begun to nag at me after our school
visits. It was simple: I hadn’t seen a single student with noticeable learning
disabilities. I had not seen a single indication of diversity. Everything
seemed very neat, very organized, and very standard. Very perfect. And
knowing what the classrooms looked like in my school district, I knew
something was missing. It just didn’t seem to add up. So one morning, as we sat
in a large group at breakfast, I brought it up.
“I have some questions about the schools we visited. I didn’t see any
students with . . .” I stopped to think—I had to choose words our guide would
understand. “I didn’t see any students who have a hard time learning,” I
continued. “Where do they go to school?”
He crinkled his brow, as I kept going. “I didn’t see any students who
have physical problems—problems with their bodies. I didn’t see any students
who look different from their classmates.”
He grew oddly quiet. Then he answered, “You and I can talk later.”
I felt deeply uncomfortable, as if I had asked something I should not
have. The others at the table shifted awkwardly in their seats. After a moment,
someone brightly shifted the subject with an anecdote or a question about our
day’s plans, and the moment passed.

In his careful English, our guide went on to tell me that the questions
I’d asked this morning were not ones they talked about in his country. Their
culture required academic excellence, he explained. To that end, students who
struggled to learn were taken from school and sent to work very young. Students
with significant disabilities were taken “away,” and their school experience
was a vague, little-understood thing. Students who excelled at school were
pushed beyond what I could believe was possible. They dedicated their young
lives to academics. “My daughter at school from 7:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., and
she study until 11:00 p.m.,” he said. “There is nothing else.”
As we talked, I began to understand that the “public schools” in
his country were only for the very best students. And it was their performance on assessments to
which students in the United States were being compared. And as we all know, in
the United States, every student gets an education—students who come to us from
all over the world, students with difficult disabilities, students who are
neglected or hungry or not supported at home. In the United States, we teach
them all and we assess them all. But that doesn’t stop oversimplified
comparisons between the United States and other countries.
More of what I learned from my trip to China later on this week!